ESS A YS CIVIL AND MORAL. 



For it is a secret both in nature and state, that it is safer to change 

 many things t ;in onc - Examine thy customs of diet, sleep, exercise, 

 apparel and the like ; and try in anything thou shall judge hurtful, to 

 discontinue it little by little ; but so, as if thou dost find any inconve 

 nience by the change, thou come back to it again ; for it is hard to dis 

 tinguish that which is generally held good and wholesome, from that 

 which is good particularly, and fit for thine own body. To be free- 

 minded and cheerfully disposed, at hours of meat, and of sleep, and of 

 exercise, is one of the best precepts of long lasting. As for the pas 

 sions and studies of the mind, avoid envy, anxious fears, anger, fret 

 ting inwards, subtile and knotty inquisitions, joys, and exhilarations in 

 excess, sadness not communicated. Entertain hopes, mirth rather 

 than joy, variety of delights rather than surfeit of them ; wonder and 

 admiration, and therefore novelties ; studies that fill the mind with 

 splendid and illustrious objects, as histories, fables, and contemplations 

 of nature. If you fly physic in health altogether, it will be too strange 

 for your body when you shall need it. If you make it too familiar, it 

 will work no extraordinary effect when sickness comcth. I commend 

 rather some diet for certain seasons, than frequent use of physic, 

 except it be grown into a custom. For those diets alter the body 

 more, and trouble it less. Despise no new accident in your body, but 

 ask opinion of it. In sickness respect health principally : and in 

 health, action. For those that put their bodies to endure in health, 

 may in most sicknesses, which are not very sharp, be cured only with 

 diet and tendering. Celsus could never have spoken it as a physician, 

 had he not been a wise man withal ; when he givcth it for one of the 

 great precepts of health and lasting, that a man do vary and inter 

 change contraries ; but with an inclination to the more benign ex 

 treme. Use fasting and full eating, but rather full eating ; watching 

 and sleep, but rather sleep ; sitting and exercise, but rather exercise, 

 and the like. So shall nature be cherished, and yet taught masteries. 

 Physicians are some of them so pleasing and conformable to the 

 humour of the patient, as they press not the true cure of the disease ; 

 and some other arc so regular in proceeding according to art for the 

 disease, as they respect not sufficiently the condition of the patient. 

 Take one of a middle temper : or if it may not be found in one man, 

 combine two of cither sort : and forget not to call as well the best 

 acquainted with your body, as the best reputed of for his faculty. 



XXXI. OF SUSPICION. 



Suspicions amongst thoughts, are like bats amongst birds, they 

 ever lly by twilight. Certainly they are to be repressed, or at the kast 

 well guarded: for they cloud the mind, they lose friends, and they 

 check with business, whereby business cannot go on currently and 

 constantly. They dispose kings to tyranny, husbands to jealousy, 

 wise men to irresolution and melancholy. They are defects not in the 

 heart, but in the brain : for they take place in the stoutest natures ; as 

 in the example of Henry the Seventh of England ; there was not a 



